Ringo Starr, ‘Long Long Road’: Review

When Ringo Starr launched Look Up in early 2025, it marked his return after a 55-year hiatus to the nation music style he first navigated throughout the Beatles’ inaugural years. From Carl Perkins covers to his affable tackle Buck Owens’ “Act Naturally” to his second solo album from 1970, Beaucoups of Blues, a set of nation songs written particularly for Starr and recorded in Nashville, his draw to the music has been pure.

Look Up was recorded in Nashville and Los Angeles with producer T Bone Burnett, who wrote or cowrote all however two of the songs, and featured visitor appearances from Alison Krauss, Larkin Poe and Billy Strings. The consequence was Starr’s greatest album in additional than half a century.

No surprise the pair has teamed up once more for Starr’s twenty second album, Lengthy Lengthy Highway, which as soon as once more options assists from Strings and Molly Tuttle, in addition to Sheryl Crow and St. Vincent this time round. If among the rapid enchantment is not as noticeable within the follow-up, Starr stays amiable as ever.

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Fortunately faraway from nation music’s 2026 requirements, Lengthy Lengthy Highway is rooted up to now — extra valentine to the style than an genuine facsimile of it. And that fits Starr, who has at all times given his all to a restricted vocal vary, simply fantastic. The album opener, “Returning With out Tears,” units the tone, with pedal metal and strings pushing an undercurrent of sentimentality that runs all through the LP, greatest illustrated on the trotting “It is Been Too Lengthy.”

Starr and Burnett get extra conventional on “I Do not See Me in Your Eyes Anymore,” first recorded in 1949 and later made a No. 1 nation hit by Charlie Wealthy in 1974. However Starr attracts inspiration from Carl Perkins’ 1959 model of the tune. It is a good callback to his early love of nation music and a full-circle second for the 85-year-old Starr, comfortably in his ingredient on Lengthy Lengthy Highway.